The deal follows the termination of the company’s previous agreement with Arrow ECS before its integration with Distribution Central. ARN understands that, prior to the distribution merger, Arrow made a determination not to support the product.

Infinidat was founded by Moshe Yanai, who was responsible for getting EMC into the storage market. Its products are highly technical offerings which require deep knowledge of mainframe and data centre storage to implement.

In addition the company offers a utility-based billing model which Arrow had issues getting to work on its back end, according to individuals familiar with the matter.

Following the parting of ways with Arrow, Infinidat appointed ex-NewLease (now known as rhipe) veteran, Mark Brown, to lead the company’s local business. He told ARN that he began searching for a new distribution deal with a company which could better serve the vendor in the local market.

Brown said that, due to the technical nature of the product, the number of distributors which would be suitable was small to begin with, but ultimately he went for a niche operator.

“This is an enterprise solution and it requires a specialist skill set and thus a distribution team which is a bit more specialised,” he said. “I did not want to go with a big distie because I didn’t want to get lost in the large number of vendors and skews that they have.

“The storage market can be a bit technical and when you look at our solution, we provide file, block storage, fibre channel, Ethernet, ultra-high availability and connection back to our 24/7 environment.”

Brown said all these factors mean the company required a fairly specific skill set to effectively distribute the product.

The company offers a range of build and configuration services to help reseller partners deliver solutions to and support their clients. The company also partners with specialist storage vendors such as Smartoptics, Komprise, and Spectra Logic.

“IDS are not a very large distributor, but they are a highly technical organisation. The have very good reach into their customer base and those customers see them as a valued partner to work with," Brown said.

“They have a very strong technical team and they and the sales team have significant storage experience. Also, the experience they have in the mainframe platform was a key point for us."

As part of its offerings, Infinidat provides a mainframe solution across its platform and is one of four storage vendors which are certified by big blue.

“I was looking for an organisation which had reach into the mainframe area well and IDS had that,” Brown added.

He said the company was actively recruiting additional systems integrators and specialist database, and applications solutions resellers across both A/NZ and IDS would play a big role in this process.

IDS director of sales, Ian Deane told ARN that following the end of its relationship with now insolvent Violin Memory, the company was on the lookout for a new vendor to fill the gap in its portfolio.

“That’s when Infinidat came along and when you look at it, it really is as good as flash if not better,” he said.

The technology itself relies on algorithms to analyse the storage environment and allocate workloads efficiently based on a customer’s usage patterns. This makes Infinidat a technology uniquely suited to an enterprise market which values reliability and efficiency over raw speed.

However, as it is not an emerging technology like flash, the product needs deep touch and Deane said IDS could bring that missing piece to the puzzle.

“It looks like a challenge, but when you dig down into what the customer wants they want availability, reliability, ease of use and better price to performance,” he said.

“We have deep technical support people and sales people and that is what we focus on. There is a product sitting there which is not bleeding edge technology but we can’t fault it yet.

“I’m confident, the only issue is getting in front of people and getting to talk to them,” he said.

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Slideshows

Opening ice breaker sessions set the scene for EDGE 2017

​EDGE 2017 kicked off with an opening ice breaker session, providing a structured environment for channel executives to form and foster new relationships and business opportunities. Photos by Maria Stefina.​

ARN returns to Melbourne for second running of After Hours

Partners, vendors and distributors came together for the second running of After Hours in Melbourne, designed to further unite the Australian channel through a series of invite-only social events in Victoria. Photos by Raymond Korn.​

A bumper crowd of partners turned out in force for Synnex Alliance 2017 in Melbourne, uncovering the key channel strategies required to deliver on the potential of digital transformation in Australia. An evening of keynote speakers, panel discussions and technology exhibitions assessed the opportunities and challenges of digital at Melbourne Olympic Park, with Sydney next up on August 16. Photos by Raymond Korn.

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